Seahawks' Schneider on the Hail Mary

Feb. 21, 2013

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INDIANAPOLIS – John Schneider said he and Ted Thompson still haven’t talked about the play.

Schneider, the former Packers front-office executive and now general manager of the Seattle Seahawks, said he talks to the Packers’ GM regularly, but not about Golden Tate’s controversial touchdown that gave Seattle a 14-12 win over the Packers on Sept. 24.

“No, we’ve pretty much stayed away from it,” Schneider said with a laugh after his press conference at the NFL scouting combine today.

Schneider was equivocal on whether he thought the replacement officials working the game should have ruled the play a catch instead of an interception by Packers safety M.D. Jennings. National furor over the call, which came in a nationally televised Monday night game, pushed the NFL to work out a new contract with its officials that week.

“I didn’t think it was (a catch) at first,” Schneider said. “But then looking at that (overhead camera angle), I can see why the guy called it a touchdown. M.D. had it right away, and then Golden had one hand on it when M.D. was still in the air,and by the time they came down there was a picture where they have both feet on the ground and they both have two hands on the ball, and then they wrestling away for it, then M.D. actually took his hand off and put it back on.

“Reviewing it like that, after the different angles I saw, I can see they called it like they did. I could see why the ESPN (commentators) were (outraged) – they showed that one angle all the time, and it was really hard to tell.”